Gathering Souls
by celeria
Summary: Ginny refuses to believe that Hermione's dead, but sometimes she's not sure if she wants to find her alive. GinnyHermione, RonHermione


You refuse to believe that she's dead, but after all this time you can't but admit she's disappeared. Ron smacked you once when you said that. You were too stunned to do anything, the pale palm cracking against your cheek, and you were more scared of the glassy dark look in his bright eyes than his hand smashing your freckles into your mouth. Harry pulled him off you, even though you didn't need him to; he was still swearing and lunging at you, but by then he was crying.

You haven't seen your brother cry for years, not since the night they pulled you all battered and water-soaked from the Chamber. Even then he was a little boy just beginning to understand what it might mean to be a man, only now he's all grown up and it scares you when he looks like he might still be a little boy. He and Harry have been so busy saving the wizarding world since they were eleven years old that Ron sometimes forgets he was ever a little boy.

You don't give a fuck anymore about saving the world. You'd sacrifice the world if you could just find her.

---

She smells like sputtered wax and tangy ink. The inside of her thigh tastes salty. Ginny runs her tongue along the line of tangled wiry hair and breathes in the faintly disturbing scent of metal.

Hermione's clit melts between Ginny's lips. She sucks gently, and then it smells hot and deep and rich, and she's pushing her fingers inside Hermione and they're sliding between layers of clear slick fluid. She'd enclosed in heat and tiny skin-ridges that make Hermione quiver. Like a quill, feathery ends twitching with each deliberate stroke.

Trails of water across legs and cheeks that shine in the candlelight. The flame changes shape, and her legs dry sticky against Ginny's small fingers She places her mouth over one hard, puckered nipple and Hermione makes a soft sound, low and mellow like dripping candles and hot Earl Grey tea.

When you wake in the morning, the wax has melted and your arms feel faintly sticky.

---

You doubt it's her, and you tell Ron as much even as you bring him Harry's Invisibility Cloak and a pair of heavy boots that will repel the rain. How many witches are there, you reason with him, who have brown hair and brown eyes? You've never thought of Hermione as ordinary, but now that you remember the way her thin curls trailed down over the shoulders of her plain black robes – she could have been anyone. You try not to remember crisper, damper little curls in other places that you wanted to believe only you knew.

"And you don't know," you remind him, tugging at the collar of the cloak, with the impatient fingers of a mother, "just because you think she was spotted in a group of Death Eaters, that it's her. Bloody hell, Ron, it could be Pansy Parkinson for all we know."

"Admit it, Ginny," he insists stubbornly, "they've been planning their attacks with a lot more thought lately. It could be possible that Mione's – well, you know, that they've – "

"How can you tell that? You don't know that." You aim a quick, muttered _Repello_ at the place you think his body is, hoping that it will keep the rain off him. "That doesn't mean she's being held captive, Ron, for Merlin's sake. You're going out on a real limb here."

It's disconcerting to see just his head floating a foot above you. You hand him his wand, which also disappears into the solid-invisible form in front of you. "Are you sure you need to do this?"

He looks scared again, round eyes like a child, mouth working nervously. You remember, suddenly, the way he looked before his first game of Quidditch. "I _have_ to, Gin. I have to find out if – well – if she's – where she is," he finishes quickly. "It might be her, Ginny, you understand."

You understand, all right, and you vaguely resent that he thinks he needs to tell you to understand. Maybe you're jealous. Jealous that he still has this conviction that he can find her. Jealous that he has a reason to find her. Jealous that he'll get to rush out in an Invisibility Cloak and a storm, the White Knight with flame hair and little-boy eyes, and he'll get to be her hero, and you'll always be the girl.

If she's alive.

You refuse to believe she's dead, but sometimes you're not sure if you want to find her alive.

You give your brother a hug, holding onto solid air, breathing in his scent. Balsam and pumpkin juice and boiled wool. He's wearing the old maroon sweater, the last one Mum knitted for him. He stopped growing when he was seventeen, the year she disappeared.

You let him go, invisible red hair and black robe bounding toward the door. You wonder if he'll find her. You wonder if she remembers that day.

---

Hermione's fingers are separating the fine, harsh red strands between her legs. Ginny closes her eyes and breathes in sharply as the dampness soaks into the thin gleaming hairs. The muscle in her thigh twitches slightly, sending the shadow of candle-flame down to her knee briefly, then back up. It falls across Hermione's flushed cheek when her tongue lays a careful, deliberate trail down to Ginny's white thigh.

Her fingers reach down and catch the edges of Hermione's long, loose-rolled curls, singeing the sweat from her palms into them. Ginny's own nails are digging into her small palms, trapping the strands of light brown hair between them, every muscle between her neck and her feet is tense and she's gasping and whispering. It starts as a small hiss when Hermione rubs her thumb over Ginny's clit and rises slowly, a tiny piteous mewling in the top of her head.

She cries out when she comes, the imprisoned locks of hair falling from her damp hands and back down to Hermione's shoulders. She breathes for a second, and the world spins outside her dizzy eyes: smells of sweat and sex, blown-out candles and balsam, soft brown eyes and thin brown curls that brush against her shoulder.

Ginny reaches for Hermione, but she's moving, her hands awkward against the freckled tops of Ginny's arms, leaving clammy patches. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." The stroking of familiar fingers against Ginny's cheek is not comforting as Hermione rolls over like a small log. "Don't start, Ginny."

Her curls are strewn out like the edges of wood shavings, and they move with the hints of Ginny's breath. "Mione, what's the matter?"

"Please _don't_," she says, her voice thick with tears. It's hard for Ginny to hear her, because her mouth is smashed against the sheets that smell like sex and spilt ink from where Ginny was doing her homework in bed the other night. Her back is dotted with damp little flecks of sweat, and Ginny reaches out to place her fingers along the ridged spine. Hermione's hair looks liquidy and golden in the flickering light.

When she speaks again, her voice is soft but matter-of-fact, no hint of the thick lump that threatened her words a minute ago. "I can't do this anymore, Ginny." She still hasn't rolled over, and the only sign of her distress is the small muscle at the top of her neck that has suddenly gone hard under Ginny's fingertips. "I'm sorry, but I can't. It's – not right."

"Not right," Ginny repeats cautiously, playing her fingers down Hermione's neck. Hermione shrugs away, and Ginny's fingers still into silence. "Mione, what do – "

"Don't," she repeats, wriggling away from Ginny. "Gin, just listen to me, please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but I can't do this anymore."

Ginny stops. Everything in her stops: her fingers on Hermione's skin, her freckle-spattered leg pressing against Hermione's, her heart catching into her throat. She doesn't need to ask, and her only question is why her stomach is rattling and rolling, because she's known all along that this was coming. "Okay," she says, staring at the pattern of cross-threading in her sheets, and she's not okay, it's not okay, but there's nothing else to say. "Okay," she says again, and she wants to curl up in a ball, like a small boulder, a tired log, but she can't while Hermione's still here. Ginny wants her to go. How funny, how different from all the other nights that she wanted nothing more than the warm body in her arms, dead sleeping weight against her shoulder, wispy curls tickling her lips and cheek.

Hermione kisses her – _one last time_, Ginny thinks, even though she tries not to – on the cheek as she goes. Her lips are soft and hot. Her breath is thin and weak. A strand of hair trails along Ginny's jaw as her curtains flutter and Hermione goes.

Morning sun is breaking through your window, parting the curtains. For a second you feel that last kiss, a brush of a cherry mouth on your skin, like a dewy breeze, a brilliant memory.

---

You haven't heard from Ron, but it doesn't surprise you. After all, if he hasn't found her, he's probably wandering through another rainstorm, protected by a water-woven cloak, still determined, and if he _has_ found her, he's probably shagging her in the middle of a rainstorm, a silvery cloak spread out on the muddy ground. You say as much to Harry, and for a second his eyes flicker sympathetically, turning blue and hazel behind his battered glasses. They're starting to bend at the bridge, the weight of years and secrets and fear, and you reach out with your wand and tap them lightly to repair them.

He flinches, even though he knows you're not trying to poke his eye out. "It's hard for you, isn't it?" he asks, reaching for a mug of tea, his eyes following you over the rim.

Harry's always been nearly as bad about emotions as your youngest older brother, and so you try not to smile, not to cry, at the irony of his statement. "It is," you agree, pouring some tea for yourself and taking a sip of Earl Grey and honey wax. For a second it tastes so much like her that you nearly choke.

After that there doesn't seem to be anything else to say. You and Harry rattle around the house, looking out the streaked windows, pretending to wait for an attack or news from the Order.

Waiting.

---

There isn't anything else to say, because there wasn't anything to say in the beginning. It was just sex, discreet and hidden in a bed surrounded by deep red curtains, nothing more than sex, so why should it be something more now?

That's what Ginny tries to tell herself, but she's not doing a very good job.

It eats away at her stomach and her heart and her mouth like acid when she sees Hermione in the Great Hall and the common room. Her head aches and her eyes sting when she hears the echo of that soft, matter-of-fact voice, impatiently bossy and infinitely loving with Hary and Ron. Ginny's taken to chewing on her hair, biting the skin at the tips of her fingers, chewing on her top lip whenever Ron invites her to sit with them at dinner, so she doesn't have to talk. She never cries when she touches herself at night in bed, but then when she's done she feels equally brokenhearted and disgusted, like she might throw up at the memory, or might just tumble into silent tears.

And her stomach rebels and her knees creak and her mouth fills with something hot and sour on the night she walks into the common room at midnight and sees her brother and Hermione, kissing, half-splayed on the squashy sofa, robes and skirt slipping down Hermione's thigh, a wide freckled hand against her open skin. Ginny turns and flees. She doesn't realize, until she gets back to her dorm room and rips open the curtains, that there are slow tracks of water making their way down her cheeks.

That night, you sit in the window, the curtains thrust back, cheek to cold glass. The rain is still pounding, a quiet roar, steady ribbons of raindrops joining eachother and rushing headlong to the ground. You press your palm to the window. There is a steamy mark in the shape of a hand, fingers spread, thumb touching forefinger. In that circle of light you wait to see someone – two someones? – coming home.

---

It wasn't her, of course, and you could have told Ron that from the beginning. It couldn't have been her, there was no real reason it might have been, except for Ron's faith and your last belief, even though you've said over and over that this time was your last belief, and then you went on to believe again. But no, he had to go see for himself, and what did he find? There was no sign of a girl with laughing brown eyes (maybe sad by now?) and wood-coloured curls (it might all have been cut off), who had Muggle blood and loved a boy with rumpled red hair. She's not with the Death Eaters. No one's seen her. Even Snape, who can't stand Ron as much as he can't stand Harry, took a moment to mutter that no, he hadn't seen Granger once.

You want to scold Ron as you take Harry's dripping Invisibility Cloak and aim a drying charm at it, so it falls in clean folds once more, and begin to fold it. His boots are caked with mud and dead grass, his face is streaked with dried water. His hands are cracked and cold, and you squeeze them briefly between yours. His eyes are brown, like hers, but a little dead, a little sad, like a child about to cry. You can tell without asking how much he wanted and needed to find her.

You refuse to believe that she's dead, but after all this time you can't but admit she's disappeared. Gone without a trace, they say. No one, not your classmates from Hogwarts or her parents or her friends from primary school, has seen her. She's disappeared so totally and completely that it's as if she never walked the earth, never kissed you, never kissed your brother. Hermione Granger is a smart girl, this you still know. You wonder if she's alive. You wonder if – no, you know – that she doesn't want to be found.

You want to find her, but every time you give up and then say _well, just this one last time_, it gets easier. You want to find her. But maybe now it's easier not to.

Not for Ron; it's harder for him. He misses her, he needs her, maybe more than you ever needed her. From your bedroom, you can hear him toss and turn and scream at night sometimes. You can hear Harry hold him, pin him down, tones of male anguish rising up and down and crossing eachother as Harry lures him back to sleep. Sometimes your own voice breaks along with them.

The three of you will go on broken without her – in separate beds, in separate rooms, without her. But what can you do? You watched her go, her black robes and wispy wood-shaving curls disappearing until you couldn't see her anymore. She walked away, carrying all your souls in her hands, and you waved goodbye to her back.


End file.
